


Barely A Person

by intoapuddle



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Drabble, Established Relationship, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29337270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoapuddle/pseuds/intoapuddle
Summary: // “You don’t have to be anything,” Dan murmurs. “I can be enough of a person for the two of us for now. Okay?”// “You’re barely a person on a good day,” Phil quips.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 21
Kudos: 160





	Barely A Person

“You look good.”

Dan snakes his arms around Phil’s waist. He glances at the reflection of the two of them in the large mirror in the bedroom, brushes his lips over the side of Phil’s neck. Phil catches his eye in the mirror. He exhales. It’s a hard, mechanical breath that doesn’t relax a single one of the rigid muscles kept in Dan’s arms. Dan tightens the hold, closes his eyes, breathes Phil in.

“I hate this,” Phil says.

He hasn’t spoken much at all today. After working for a couple hours, Dan had found him in here. Only wearing pants, staring at some kind of version of himself in the mirror. It’s not always good to intervene, but Dan couldn’t stand to distance himself from Phil’s agitated state any longer. He thinks that’s what this is, anyway. Agitation.

Dan lets his palm run across the hair on Phil’s chest, laying it flat against his heart. It’s beating fast. Dan kisses his neck once more. He’s not sure what’s going on in Phil’s head, but he can feel his pain.

“I don’t know,” Phil says, finally exhaling enough to lean back against Dan’s chest. He’s letting Dan carry some of it. “I don’t know who that is.”

He gestures vaguely at his own reflection. At those long legs, that slender shape, the grown out messy hair. His heart is slowing down.

“That’s okay,” Dan whispers.

He knows the feeling intimately. Not just in exposure to Phil feeling it, but inside of himself. Phil turns around in Dan’s arms, wrapping his own around Dan’s waist as he leans in to kiss his lips. Dan kisses back. It’s gentle, reassuring. 

“You don’t have to be anything,” Dan murmurs. “I can be enough of a person for the two of us for now. Okay?”

“You’re barely a person on a good day,” Phil quips.

Dan’s eyebrows shoot up, making his face look as ridiculously offended as possible. “Excuse me-”

“Shh,” Phil says, but he’s smiling when he leans in to nuzzle Dan’s neck.

“Here I am, offering to be a person for you,” Dan rants, “and you’re telling me it’s not good enough? Christ, man.”

Phil laughs against Dan’s neck. “Shush.”

Dan holds Phil tighter. “Babuse,” he mutters. “Absolute babuse.”

Phil keeps giggling, attempting to shush Dan while Dan keeps ranting and it’s not a real conversation in any sense of the word but it’s making Phil relax, and laugh, so. Doesn’t really matter if it’s real at all, does it?

They end up on the bed. Phil’s resting his cheek against Dan’s chest. Conversation leaves and comes back intermittently, but communication is always present. Dan strokes a finger along the hairline on the back of Phil’s head, softly, taking in every little breath in response from his partner.

Phil isn’t usually the type to verbalise the thoughts he’s been having today. He isn’t one to pinpoint that push-and-pull of uncertainty for what it is. Sometimes that’s unrelatable. The feeling’s so familiar to Dan he, like Phil said, struggles with it even on a good day. But then Dan spent enough years of his life in complete and utter denial of his internal life that sometimes, he forgets he’s on the other side of that all the same.

“You’re meant to be more at peace when you grow older, right?” Phil says after a few minutes of silence.

Dan cups the back of Phil’s head. He’s staring up at the ceiling. He knows Phil isn’t looking at him right now, anyway. It’s hard to talk when there are eyes to admire.

“Maybe,” Dan offers. “What d’you mean?”

“I’m at peace in a sense,” Phil says. “But at the same time not.”

“Hm?”

“I feel like the older I get, the more versions of me there are. The person I was at twenty, or fifteen, or even a year ago. They all still exist in me in a way.”

“Yeah.”

“Some days I wake up and I feel like I’m looking at everything through the lens of my teenage self,” Phil says quietly. “And like I’m not big enough to fill out the body I’m in now, being this person to everyone else.”

Dan hums. It’s almost scary, hearing it from someone else, worded so carefully. He knows exactly what Phil means, but he never realised Phil put so much thought into it. He didn’t realise Phil was conceptualising it to himself in this way.

“Have you been hanging out with me too much?” Dan asks, because he doesn’t really know what else to say.

Phil chuckles. Dan finally looks at him, at the brightness in his eyes as he stretches his neck to kiss him.

“We’re long past ‘too much’, don’t you reckon?” Phil grins against Dan’s lips.

“Hey,” Dan says, making Phil flinch because apparently being past ‘too much’ doesn’t mean Phil won’t react to sudden noises. “I thought you were gonna say something sweet.”

Phil is smiling, shaking his head. Dan’s hand is still cradling the back of his neck. “Do I sound crazy?” Phil asks.

“No,” Dan says, because it’s true. Phil makes more sense to him than most people do. Except for when it comes to closing the cupboards and what exactly a fancy meal means, but those things don’t really count at the end of the day.

“It’s so dumb that I still ask _you_ that, isn’t it?” Phil grins.

“What, because I think it’s a reasonable suggestion to take over your whole ‘being a person’-thing when you’re not feeling up for it?”

“Right,” Phil giggles, fitting his cheek back on top of Dan’s chest. “You’re just proving my point; That’s exactly what I mean. You’re not the person to trust when I truly go crazy.”

“When?” Dan laughs. “And no, trust me. _If_ you went crazy, I’d be the first to know.”

Phil hums.

“If you stopped snacking and didn’t leave your shit everywhere or didn’t forget the milk out,” Dan explains, “that’s when I’d know.”

“Maybe I’m just crazy now,” Phil shrugs.

“Obviously, you are,” Dan says. “You’re putting up with me still.”

Phil slaps Dan’s chest lightly. “Stop that.”

“Babuse,” Dan grins.

“You’re the best,” Phil mumbles. Now he sounds serious. And kind of upset about it at the same time.

“Sorry,” Dan says. “I don’t mean it.”

“I know.”

They’re silent for a bit longer, until Phil speaks again.

“You should be a person for a bit,” is what he says. “I’m taking you up on it.”

Dan nods, stroking the back of Phil’s head. “Sure, bub.”

Conversation leaves the room for the night. And as much as Phil thinks he’s not a person right now, Dan doesn’t feel alone. He’s anything but, actually, but he won’t tell Phil that. There’s no use in breaking the illusion that ‘being’ means anything, that it’s completely solid, that it’s anything other than a comfort or something to dress up in when you need to. Phil probably knows that, anyway. If he’s anything like Dan, he’s well aware that you can pretend like it matters while knowing it doesn’t. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

All Dan knows at this point, is that multiple things can be true at the same time. It’s a lot to deal with. He’ll carry Phil through it for now.


End file.
